Just over a month after failing by half a size to take the invincible Americans to overtime in the final of the Olympic Games, the French basketball players have resumed their season. And on the occasion of the first match of the year, the “champions match” won by a wide margin by Bourges against Villeneuve-d’Ascq, on Saturday 21 September in Nanterre (80-49), the women’s basketball league (LFB) announced that it had adopted for the first time in its history a collective agreement ratifying the professionalisation of the sport and providing, in particular, for the creation of maternity leave.
If such a collective agreement has existed among male basketball players for almost twenty years, it remains a rare occurrence among French female athletes: only the Women’s Handball League had until then (in 2021) put in place such a tool regulating the practice of its discipline and intended to protect players. “Today we are 20 years behind our male counterparts”greeted Amara Sy, president of the National Union of Basketball Players (SNB), in a joint press release, evoking “A historic piece of news that French sport can take heart from.”
Until now, like all disciplines that do not have their own collective agreement, basketball players depended on the national sports collective agreement, which does not take into account the specificities of their sport.
The result of several years of negotiations, this sectoral agreement came into force on 1Ahem July but announced on Saturday. “aims to promote equity, structure and attractiveness of high-level women’s basketball”The LFB specifies. Around the table, the league, the Union of Women’s Basketball League Clubs (UCLFB), the SNB and the Basketball Coaches’ Union (SCB) tried to find common ground to establish, in particular, a minimum wage, maternity leave guaranteeing up to twelve months of full salary during the period, a guarantee of continued salary in the event of loss of leave and the creation of a new apprentice status.
The issue of maternity for high-level athletes has been raised for some time and this agreement aims to ensure that “Motherhood is no longer an obstacle” to the careers of the players – and the coaches –, the press release insists. “It is a revolution, when I remember the practical jokes that one could be subjected to when arriving at a club.A former player reacted, quoted by The team. There was a form of pressure, of incentive not to even consider it. »
This agreement “has a great ambition for progress”estimate Marie-Laure Lafargue and Marie-Sophie Obama, co-president of the UCLFB. Because this collective agreement “It aims to support girls from their formative years to their retraining, taking into account work rhythms and social protection”says Julie Campassens, director of the SNB, quoted by The team. And this concerns all professional players, young players in training and head and assistant coaches in the first and second women’s divisions.
